by Brad Warner

While Brad is away at Tassajara, and away from the Internet, we’ll be periodically filling in the gaps with some recordings of talks Brad’s given on his recent book tour. Thanks to John Graves of DÅgen Sangha LA for editing and providing the recording.

Enjoy!

You can get these automagically as they’re posted if you subscribe to the Hardcore Zen podcast on iTunes. And please write us a review on iTunes, it bumps up the podcast in the charts!

I’d really appreciate it if you’d download from iTunes and write a review, if you’re going to download. That will bump up the podcast in the iTunes Podcast charts.

To everyone: I’m sorry I’ve taken such a long time since the last podcast episode. Life has been hectic, and I’ve had energy directed towards getting Dogen Sangha Los Angeles off the ground as a functioning non-profit. My hope is as the group grows eventually someone will show up who wants to help with the editing of the podcast and we’ll be able to increase output.

“The Buddha has not preached anything for you, and there is nothing for you to ask a teacher. Not only have sound and form not been distinguished, there are not even any eyes and ears. And yet the mind moon shines clear and bright; the eye-blossom blooms, its patterns fresh and clear. You should go all the way to reach this realization.

How can you understand this principle? I’ll add a saying in your behalf– quickly set your eyes before being:

The mind-moon and eye-blossom have fine bright color–
Opening beyond time, who is there to enjoy them?”

That would be from Denkoroku #42 (Tongan), translated by T. Cleary.

Now I want to know, how does one quickly set the eyes before being? A bunny trick, like this:

Attributed over on Tao Bums in “Further Discussion” under General Discussion to Nisargadatta:

“Q: I cannot say that I am now a different man. But I did discover new things about myself, states so unlike what I knew before that I feel justified in calling them new.

M: The old self is your own self. The state which sprouts suddenly and without cause, carries no stain of self; you may call it ‘god’. What is seedless and rootless, what does not sprout and grow, flower and fruit, what comes into being suddenly and in full glory, mysteriously and marvellously, you may call that ‘god’. It is entirely unexpected yet inevitable, infinitely familiar yet most surprising, beyond all hope yet absolutely certain. Because it is without cause, it is without hindrance. It obeys one law only; the law of freedom. Anything that implies a continuity, a sequence, a passing from stage to stage cannot be the real. There is no progress in reality, it is final, perfect, unrelated.

Q: How can I bring it about?

M: You can do nothing to bring it about, but you can avoid creating obstacles. Watch your mind, how it comes into being, how it operates. As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there. It is not in the sky nor in the all-pervading ether. God is all that is great and wonderful; I am nothing, have nothing, can do nothing. Yet all comes out of me — the source is me; the root, the origin is me.

When reality explodes in you, you may call it experience of God. Or, rather, it is God experiencing you. God knows you when you know yourself. Reality is not the result of a process; it is an explosion. It is definitely beyond the mind, but all you can do is to know your mind well. Not that the mind will help you, but by knowing your mind you may avoid your mind disabling you. You have to be very alert, or else your mind will play false with you. It is like watching a thief — not that you expect anything from a thief, but you do not want to be robbed. In the same way you give a lot of attention to the mind without expecting anything from it.”

‘ Was just fartin around with the cog diss that Sweeping Zen provides me like bitter sweet honey on the even occasion – only, of course, when I find myself straining towards its eager nipple. Yum.

Just in case folk thought I was merely and only a psychotic analytical fict That’s just a hobby.

Now I know why the tatagatha prefers vodka mornings. Even if he still understands the pertainment of dripping eyelets of water into a Noah’s Creek at five minute intervals as a means to lap at the weave of the Emperor’s undergarment.

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it–it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.

Baudelaire and I should probably not be in the same room together. I have a wife, and what with the absolute, a foursome would just induce a delinquent game of whimsy. (We prefer a direct, yet tremulously intimate fuck).

I’ve no gripe that that particular recurrence of electrons necessitates all being. And so I’m kinda thankful for that, and any, gas producing bio-matrix’s interpenetrative necessitude, contigent as it is upon my own alacrity..

However.

Let us not forget such as the Bavarian Sleight (circa 1922). Historical vagaries notwithstanding, the Munich Throng (as the Leder Swamps went under the moniker of then), cosset within their annals a most grave anecdote concerning their Little Addy (Adolf Saxos Hitler to you and me, and innumerable others thereafter).

For dearest Addy was known to harbour a certain rural angst against the carrot. A minor congenital condition, well known in the most southerly of Germanic regions, and especially amongst the homosexual community east of Baden Baden. Unfortunately for friends and aquaintances of feisty Addy, one of the side-effects of said condition was a compulsive, crypto-donkey hautishness, quite unbecoming of one of Addy’s standing amidst the Green Munich Ubermensch (of whom he was honorary treasurer and Secondary Jade).

Indeed, if it were not for Addy’s sniffy attitude, sound conjecture has it that the musical note ‘H’ might have found it’s way – via Addy’s gifted girlfriend, one Heidi Vlunk – into western musical structure, and thus inaugurating, 2000 or so years before subsequent projections would have it, The Age of Fun (or That Of Not Being a An unwholesome Dick- academicians still quibble over the positive or negative ascriptions and nomenclature, but I think the gist is clear).

And so, I put it to you, dear Mark, that whereas one might point to the certitude of equity with regard to the ontological valorization of the like of a Tebbe, one’s grandiloquently empathic veracities regarding unobstructable presence yet be countermanded by that very humanistic compunction to ululate counterpointed semantics against the unreason of a fool, when such,as it were, levigates inside the honey pot of communal value, as though it beckoned with the kind of arousal, best left to pubesesnt girls.

Or whatever you want to call it or not (see Fred’s list above at 5:25 a.m., then add every word for everything in the dictionary in every language and then be silent and listen, and another “word” will come..).

Andy, your diatribe brought a smile to my face! I’m sure Adam is sincere as can be and is performing a service, but I also find Brad’s pitches much easier to take and even occasionally respond to. Something about a sense of humor and a commitment to keep at it as long as the life savings hold out, maybe.

I need to read that book about encounters with Mast masters, thanks for that, Mumbly Peg.

Drunk on Love by Bonnie Hayes

Somebody steady me please cause I’m drunk on love
I’ve caught an incurable disease– I’m drunk on love
My world is spinning around, I’m so drunk on love
But I’ll be laughing when I hit the ground, drunk on love
And I don’t care, I don’t care anymore
Because the world keeps turning around
It makes a beautiful, frightening sound– I hear it in my sleep
I don’t care, I don’t care anymore
Even though I know what’s coming
Even though my head is humming, I want to drink deep

Don’t try to give me champagne, I get drunk on love
Only one thing will ease my pain– to get drunk on love
All day every day I wanna get drunk on love
I’m throwing my life away to be drunk on love
And I don’t care, I don’t care anymore
Don’t try to intervene
I want to fall into this dream and never wake up
I don’t care, I don’t care anymore
If it pulls me gently down
My sorrows are only drowned when you fill my cup

I wish I could share the recording, but it’s apparently not available online (yet?).

“Masts can be in varying degrees of the states of salik or majzoob. Salik means more in touch with outward surroundings — grounded and ordinary. Majzoob refers to that state of being immersed in the inner plane and divorced from the outside world.”

“And so, I put it to you, dear Mark, that whereas one might point to the certitude of equity with regard to the ontological valorization of the like of a Tebbe, one’s grandiloquently empathic veracities regarding unobstructable presence yet be countermanded by that very humanistic compunction to ululate counterpointed semantics against the unreason of a fool, when such , as it were, levigates inside the honey pot of communal value, as though it beckoned with the kind of arousal, best left to pubesesnt girls.”

“To answer Dave, I’d also love to interview Brad for this. If he is open and willing so am I. If not there are other Nishijima sangha members who I’m sure I could get some interview time with, like Jundo and Gustav Ericcson. So I plan to compile a bulk of interviews, asking a variety of core questions of people. When it comes time for the editing, I plan to call on the help of people like James Ford, author of Zen master Who?, in order to flesh out a general historical overview of Zen here.

My hope is that, in the end, the film will have a broad appeal to many demographics. I’d like to do segments on women in the practice and persons of a variety of ethnic groups in the practice, as well.”

“I believe there is such a thing as awakening. I have experienced it. It is the direct insight into the fact we are two things at once. We are creatures woven out of a constantly moving dynamic of relationships, including genes and our experiences. And we are one. Or, I do like the Buddhist metaphor for this, we are empty. We lack any abiding essence. But that “essencelessness” is actually an openness. My experience of this is that this knowing, or again, the Zen metaphor better describes, there is a not knowing that is permanently a part of who I am. But, but both things are happening at once, the constrained and the open. In fact there is no way to unravel the temporal and conditioned from the boundless and free.”

“In fact there is no way to unravel the temporal and conditioned from the boundless and free.”

The place where I am, the temporal and conditioned; the openness to how consciousness generated by the muscles and ligaments affects my equalibrium and my sense of place, boundless and free or not really experienced. Did I mention gravity, the surface of a silver mountain, the iron of a wall miles high?

The strange ravel of the temporal and conditioned with the boundless and free, a ravel that turns and twists, winds forward and back, and rolls side to side in the one place I am now; everyone comes to their senses once in while, some more than others, evidently.

” With an advanced practitioner, inner recognition may even seem to be a regressed state, or seem absurd–you cannot allow yourself so easily to say “I’m okay.” To say “I am Kobun” is understandable. To say “I am not Kobun”–now I am in trouble! And yet…form is emptiness. No eyes, no nose, no ears, everything chopped down and thrown away. Heart Sutra, Nagarjuna, five hundred years of Buddhist theories, all put under “no.” This “no” is more exactly called “no no zero.” What kind of eye, what kind of mind, can receive this insight of emptiness? “

“In Thailand, they differentiate the conventional realities and the Ultimate Truth. We tend to regard conventional realities as ultimate, as the real world, and live according to our conditioning, to our prejudices, assumptions, and personal identities. But in awakened consciousness we are observing this. The Buddha emphasized mindfulness, and as far as I know this emphasis is not found in any other religious convention. It is very interesting that the Buddha takes this mindfulness and calls it the “Gate to the Deathless.” It’s very difficult for us to define it because it is indefinable. But it is recognizable.”

“Since the Vestibular system only provides information about the position and movement of the head it relies on wellintegrated links with the senses of proprioception and vision to facilitate postural
adjustments in the rest of the body” from the article here.

“If there is a doubt about something, doubt arises and then there is desire for something. But the practice is one of letting go. We keep with what is, recognizing conditions as conditions and the unconditioned as the unconditioned. It’s as simple as that.”

Ajahn Sumedho, Sounds of Silence pdf.

I don’t know.

“But if you have a way of turning from conditioned phenomena to the unconditioned, then there is no kind of kamma being made, and the conditioned habits can fade away and cease. It’s like a ‘safety hatch’ in the mind, the way out, so your kammic formations, “sankharas”, have an exit, a way of flowing away instead of recreating themselves.” (Ibid)